38 passengers on an Azerbaijan Airlines plane were killed. The investigation rapidly confirmed that the crash was caused by a Russian missile launch, reports Euronews.
The plane, flying from Baku Azerbaijan to the Chechen capital Grozny, crashed on Wednesday morning near the city of Aktau on Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea coast. The crash killed 38 of the 67 people on board the machine.
On Wednesday evening, a version of events was already being pushed that, due to dense fog over Grozny, the plane was supposed to be diverted to an alternate airport in the Russian Dagestan capital, Machachkala, but the machine most likely collided with a flock of birds, causing the control system to fail.
Also yesterday, footage began to emerge showing the unburned part of the plane. It could be seen that the hull plating was perforated and the holes resembled gunfire marks.
As Euronews reports today, citing sources in the Azerbaijani government, it was a Russian surface-to-air missile that caused the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Aktau on Wednesday.
According to the sources, the missile was fired towards Flight 8432 during drone operations over Grozny, and shrapnel hit passengers and cabin crew, exploding next to the plane during the flight.
Government sources told Euronews that despite the pilots’ pleas for an emergency landing, the damaged plane was not allowed to land at any Russian airport and was ordered to fly across the Caspian Sea towards Aktau in Kazakhstan.